Apr 14, 2012

Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa

When this book was first published in February 1997, the author, Keith Richburg - a black American, was shunned and insulted for daring to reject the Afro-centric idealism which is an article of faith in black America. His book sparked anger and controversy among black nationalists for daring to repudiate his African roots and thanking God that his ancestor was enslaved.

After he spent three years reporting from Africa for the Washington Post, Mr Richburg hurls down a challenge to black American leaders to stop deceiving themselves and the 35 million (black) descendants of slaves, that Africa is Eden on earth.

"I'm tired of lying,' he writes. 'And I'm tired of all the ignorance and hypocrisy and the double standards I hear and read about Africa, much of it from people who've never been there, let alone spent three years walking around amid the corpses.

"Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers and I'll throw it back in your face, and then I'll rub your nose in the images of the rotting flesh.'

"Had my ancestor not made it out of here,' Richburg muses, 'I might have ended up in that crowd...maybe I would have been one of those bodies, washing over the waterfall in Tanzania or maybe my son would have been set ablaze by soldiers. Or I would be limping now from the torture I received in some rancid police cell...' – Sourced from www.revisionisthistory.org - (follow the link to read more)

The second edition was published on 22 September 2009.

Product Description:
Nothing in Keith Richburg’s long and respected journalistic career at the Washington Post prepared him for what he would encounter as the paper’s correspondent in Africa. He found a continent where brutal murder had become routine, where dictators and warlords silenced dissent with machine guns and machetes, and where starvation had become depressingly common. With a great deal of personal anguish, Richburg faced a difficult question: If this is Africa, what does it mean to be an African American?

In this provocative and unvarnished account of his three years on the continent of his ancestors, Richburg takes us on a extraordinary journey that sweeps from Somalia to South Africa, showing how he confronted the divide between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity.

Reviews of this outstanding bestseller are aplenty on the Amazon.com page, where the paperback version can be purchased for a bargain price.

About the author:Keith Richburg is a native of Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University Liggett School, the University of Michigan (BA, 1980) and the London School of Economics (MSc. 1985).

He served as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post in Southeast Asia from 1986 until 1990; in Africa from 1991 through 1994; in Hong Kong from 1995 through 2000; and in Paris from 2000 until mid-2005. He was Foreign Editor of The Post, and was chief of the New York bureau of The Post from 2007 until 2010. He covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, riding a horse partway across the Hindu Kush, a journey he chronicled in The Post's Style section. He also covered the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti in 1986.

His book, “Out of America”, details his experiences as a correspondent in Africa, during which he witnessed the Rwandan Genocide, a civil war in Somalia, and a cholera epidemic in Democratic Republic of Congo. Richburg's book provoked controversy in the African American community due to its perceived criticism of Africans.

He is currently China correspondent for The Post based in Beijing and Shanghai.